Five Things That Never Happened To SJSands
by permetaform
Summary: What if it wasn't the eyes?


_Five Things that Never Happened_ is a multi-fandom sub-genre of **five different AU's** strung together and presented as a single fic

* * *

disclaimer: not my characters  
pairings: implied  
warnings: as gory as the film, has death

* * *

**Five Things That Never Happened to Sheldon Jeffery Sands  
**

**-  
**

**I.**  
  
And his wrists were fucked off like an abrupt ending, bones and nerves and sinews ribbon-flapping from arid winds in a celebration of the decrepit. He's outside, had left the lone nutsucker, that they'd thought could hold him, with knee and neck snapped. _a kick to the 'cap when the pants are down, a quick wrench of the forearms to crack the spine_  
  
And he itches for a cigarillo, is jittery for it. He takes his aggression out on random cartel from the street, hunting them down one-by-one and breaking their bones, crunch-sharp, with relish even though his stumps scream from the pressure. _Look ma, no hands._ He's always known how to apply leverage.  
  
He misses the feel of a cell phone.  
  
He misses eating cleanly. He misses combing his hair. He _hates_ having to resort to a series of rope loops to fasten his pants. And he would smile calmly anyway except.  
  
He can't hold a gun. His phantom fingers ache for it; he's become animal and scrabbling. His dignity drags dust like an old whore's tits, much abused since times past when he was full of it and perky.  
  
But oh, how much closer to the violence he's forced to embrace. He feels death pressed against his back and breathing down his neck, lining their arms up and substituting scythe-filled hands to his non-existent ones. He renders death in the shadows and is caught only once.  
  
El Mariachi pulls up short. Measures Sands quietly.  
  
Offers a cigarette.

**-**

**II.**  
  
_"You have such a foul mouth, and you don't do it justice."_ They'd said.  
  
His mouth was a ragged mess now, bloody and inflamed and slick. His gums were empty and he was left with a impotent, hacked-off lobe of a muscle that moved just enough so he could swallow. They liked it when he swallowed; which he could just barely do through the drugs that they'd pumped him full.  
  
His jaw was sore, but they'd preserved his bone structure carefully. They'd proclaimed it too pretty to destroy, and him too useful to let go. They moved him when things went hairier than the fat lady's ass because, while Barillo was replaceable, a beauty such as Sands was rare.  
  
They fed him soup like a pet, when they'd remembered to feed him, and he would dream they tasted of copper and bitter salt and let the fury drive him. He'd always used anger as a goad and wasn't above using it on himself.  
  
He thinks he's developing resistance to the tranquilizers.  
  
He is wrong.  
  
It was more adrenaline and pure _will_ that lets him move when gunfire breaks out at the far side of the compound. He grabs and wrenches and dislocates the hip of the current fuck. Takes the guns and rakes his way through the grunts (_shoot first and ask ques--oh wait, I **can't**_), until he meets one broad shouldered Mexican whom he doesn't recognize. This surprises him because he'd thought he met all the cartel by now, in the Biblical sense.  
  
It's the only thing that saves the mariachi.

**-**

**III.**  
  
She gives Sands a parting eskimo kiss, because they both loved irony and because she remembers too well how he misquotes references and the places his face goes asymmetrical.  
  
_Cut off thy nose if it offends thee, but cut off your** own**, you shit-breeding cunt._  
  
She had gripped his jaw and pouted at daddy. Insisted that no one should be prettier than she.  
  
Insisted that there was no worse outrage, with a manic grin.  
  
A strong wire, heated hot enough, can cut through anything and cauterizes as it goes. So when Sands stumbles out of the door there is no blood to offer to the land. But the offering of pain and shame is enough, to keep him living.  
  
He wears a bandanna. It hangs strangely. He can't wear sunglasses anymore and he keeps his hair long.  
  
El Mariachi's face barely has time to rearrange itself into horror and pity, and Sands doesn't give him time to change it. He later wishes he had because it's rendered immortal now, in rigor mortis.

**-**

**IV.**  
  
And so they took his earlobes and pulled it far and tight and sliced them off like chicken wings, stuck a short, thin drill in to crumple his inner ear and it felt like someone was stirring up his brain. But no, they made sure to leave _that_ intact.  
  
The world keeps on tilting. Wait, fuck it, that's him.  
  
He's lost his balance.  
  
He feels like he's beating himself against something invisible, and that nothing makes a dent, gives a fuck or makes a noise. He can only feel himself screaming, sometimes, when he's loud.  
  
He holds "The Yellow Brick Road" in his mind, the full chords of an orchestra, a woman singing, a grace note lilt, a man groaning, and the loneliness of a single guitar. The sounds are correct, he tells himself. They will _remain_ correct. He will keep these steady, and he will believe himself and he will still. He will still have Garland's biography.  
  
_Can you hear me now?_  
  
He stumbles too many times to brush off or deny, but he can still shoot straight. He escapes with most of his life, but he misses gunshot, footsteps, wind, and strings.  
  
He doesn't talk much, anymore.  
  
It doesn't help that he later meets El, The, musician, seranading devotion to his country in fermented agave, bleached bone, new blood, and his lips form words asking Sands _what is wrong?_  
  
_"Go fuck the ass you rode in on."_ Sands hopes he says.

**-**

**V.**  
  
Sands is the teller of legends.

_"How does one find El Mariachi?" _

Because:

_pause_

Before they'd carved a second fuckhole from his skull, the good doctor was sadly interrupted.

_"There is a man only known as El Mariachi−"_

And, in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king.

_"Fuckface, there is** only** a man known as El Mariachi−"_

But. No-one is blind.

_"A man without a name."_

Meanwhile, Sheldon Jeffery Sands had escaped the CIA, slipped through the runny bowels of the cartel and out again, defecated in a tumble into the lives of the townsfolk.

_"Yes, he exists."_

He shifts into the preexisting role that Belini'd held, when the asslicker first met him. When Sands had the three arms, two eyes, and one vision, and had waited for history to come to him baited by the call of his undefended back.

_"Will you tell me where he is?"_

And come they did, doctors and pistoleros and betrayers and scum. And he's survived the cartels with an eye intact, though there are no medals for that in these, the lands of the shattered.

_"Yes: elsewhere."_

He feels that his story is as half-formed as his half-sight; he feels like he should give something away, but he doesn't ask himself what.

---

author's notes: Fic is dedicated to **inkbug** for her picspam. And many many thanks to **inkbug**, **lilneko**, and **linaelyn** for beta!


End file.
